During a time when most of the country’s prominent alternative weekly newspapers have been consolidated and streamlined by corporations, the Shepherd Express has beat the odds, remaining locally owned. The paper has emerged from its unlikely beginning as a satirical...

More by David Luhrssen

When the financial tailspin of 2008 forced Alan Greenspan to confess that he was mistaken about the unshakable rationality and self-correcting nature of the economy, it was as if a Roman Catholic cardinal publicly doubted the divinity of Christ.

In the pair of emotionally contradictory images that open Mel Gibson’s Edge of Darkness, swollen corpses surfacing on a moonlit river are followed without pause by grainy home video of a little girl playing in the surf.

A prolific recording artist always willing to share the microphone with guest stars, Eric Blowtorch’s musical endeavors have been more a vocation in the traditional sense than a career. He has reached a new height on his latest album with his band the Welders, The Alphabet.

I’m reluctant to admit it, but I don’t listen to much independent or alternative hip-hop these days, or at least not nearly as much as I did in college, when Rhymesayers, Def Jux and Stones Throw records were as much a part of my diet as ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese.

Milwaukee’s harsh winters take a well-documented toll on us physically, numbing our limbs, wearing out our backs and testing our immune systems. They can be just as rough on us psychologically. Singer-songwriter Hayward Williams’ latest album was born of this annual seclusion.

A prolific recording artist always willing to share the microphone with guest stars, Eric Blowtorch’s musical endeavors have been more a vocation in the traditional sense than a career. He has reached a new height on his latest album with his band the Welders, The Alphabet.